


it's not their style (to be so bold)

by outlawslikeus



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: (or lack thereof since it's jared), 5+1 Things, Angst, Awkwardness, Bitterness, Canon Era, Childhood Friends, College, Established Relationship, Fear, Getting Together, Insecurity, Internalized Homophobia, Lack of Communication, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Not Beta Read, Pining, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Pre-Slash, Reconciliation, Time Skips, Vulnerability
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:01:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25125880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outlawslikeus/pseuds/outlawslikeus
Summary: Jared Kleinman is loud in all the ways that distract from the person behind the words.Five times Jared tries—and fails—to tell Evan he loves him, and one time he succeeds.
Relationships: Evan Hansen/Jared Kleinman
Comments: 32
Kudos: 90





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Oh boy. A multichaptered thing. I have a fair amount written out already, but feel free to yell at me in the comments if this never gets completed. This _should_ update around once a week. Also I'm not too pleased with the summary, so it might change.
> 
> Title from Something So Right by Paul Simon but inspired by [Will Roland singing it](https://youtu.be/1NjFeJGTzoA).

It starts like this: on a couch in Jared’s basement, when they’re eleven years old. The first time it ever crosses his mind, Evan is sleeping over at his house on a long weekend, and it’s a bit later than either of them should be awake. They’re watching old movies in the basement (Evan had wanted to watch something newer, but Jared insisted on classics, and it was his house, so he got to choose).

As Evan laughs at something that happened on the screen, he slaps Jared’s leg, and Jared startles at the sudden contact. Now, he’s all too aware of how Evan’s knee digs into the side of his thigh and how his hand hasn’t moved from where it still rests on his leg. Evan’s enraptured by the movie and he probably hasn’t even realized his hand is still there. Funny, that Evan is more interested than he is when he was the one who picked it.

 _Shit,_ he thinks, as he internally winces at the swear, still not old enough to be desensitized to the word, even if the occasion calls for it. _Do I like—_ and then he stops that thought from fully playing out, even though he knows how it’s going to end. The giddy and exciting feeling is almost instantly replaced by fear and maybe just a tiny bit of revulsion. Boys who like other boys are supposed to be okay, and he’s totally okay with it, but that he isn’t one of them. He can't be one of them. He's already a big enough target, with his glasses and his teeth and his _everything_. He can't afford to be _gay_ , too.

So obviously, he’s not.

He swallows down the sudden revelation and turns to Evan, asking if he wants to fire up the _Dreamcast_ now. He needs to do something to take his mind off this, but the way Evan lights up at the suggestion makes a small piece in Jared’s chest twist as he stares at him, and he knows that he is, pardon his language, _fucked_.

* * *

It’s weird, at first. Every time he’s around Evan, he becomes hyper aware of everything about the both of them. Jared consciously makes an effort to stand close (but not too close) to him. He feels his skin prickle and the hairs on his arms stand up, as if he were cold, but in fact he’s warmer than ever with his accelerated heart rate. Whenever Evan comes to him with his weird anxieties he wants nothing more than for the world to be a kinder place for him. Middle school fucking sucks, and especially this quarter, because he and Evan has an asshole teacher that mean enough that some students end up crying in class. He’s gotten detention for talking back as many times as Evan’s cried in the class, all very coincidentally.

The first time it happens, he finds Evan sitting on the floor outside of the door of the detention room as when they’re finally let out, an hour and a half after school has ended.

“What’re you still doing here?” he asks, all the while meaning _you didn’t have to wait_.

“Your mom picks us up from school,” Evan says, even though Jared knows Mrs. Hansen’s Friday shifts end early enough to pick Evan up if he wants or that he could easily take the bus, but still he’s grateful that Evan maintains the illusion he didn’t wait for him. He nods at this and they’re off, walking through the empty school together, silent except for the sound of their sneakers hitting the tiled floor echoing throughout the hallways.

When they get to the carpool line, which is completely empty of other cars, Jared’s mom is already there waiting for them in her beige minivan and he can see through even the slightly tinted windows that she is not happy at all. He’s always skirted the line between being mouthy and actually getting into trouble, and apparently she’s none too happy that her son has gotten detention for the first time in his life.

He’s old enough that he usually sits in the front seat of the car when his dad isn't there, but today, seeing the look on his mom’s face, he sits in the back with Evan. She stares him down as he gets in and he knows that he’s going to be yelled at the moment Evan leaves the car. The entire ride to Evan’s house is uncomfortably silent. He looks over at Evan, and if he didn’t know better, his expression made it seem like he was the one facing imminent punishment. He wants to nudge Evan in the side and tell him it’s not him that’s going to be yelled at so he can relax, but he’s too scared to say anything with his mother’s murderous glares that occasionally meet his eyes in the rearview mirror.

Finally, they park on the curb next to Evan’s house, but Evan doesn’t make any move to get out. Jared turns to look at him and he’s surprised by the determined look on his face and how tightly he has his hands wrapped around the sides of his backpack sitting in his lap.

“Well, this is you, honey” his mom says, looking in the rearview mirror at Evan, with a strained veneer of cheerfulness. “Could you tell your mom—”

“Wait, Mrs. Kleinman, before I go, can you—um, I mean, please don’t punish Jared for getting detention,” Evan forces out, and Jared is even more shocked. Evan is terrified of speaking up to adults and their asshole teacher making him cry today certainly hadn’t helped. Even though it was his mom, who Evan has known as long as he was alive, he couldn’t believe that Evan was willing to take a stand against an adult, much less for _him_.

“It wasn’t his fault at all. Our science teacher was making me… well um, he was being really mean to me, and the only thing Jared did was try to get him to stop. He really didn’t deserve detention. I promise.”

At this, his mom’s schooled face that had been hiding slight confusion melts into something more open. She’s always had a soft spot for Evan, and he knows that she wishes he were more like him, quiet and obedient; what she doesn’t see with her seat and Evan’s backpack blocking the view, is Evan’s hands shaking and white in the face of confrontation with an authority figure.

“Oh honey, I didn’t know about that part, but Jared and I will discuss his behavior when we get back home, okay?”

Although his mom seems a lot more understanding of the situation now, he can tell from her tone, which is placating but still a bit put on, that the discussion at home will probably lead to some form of punishment; after all, he did get detention.

But again, Evan still doesn’t move even at the clear dismissal. “Jared won’t be in trouble, right?” he insists. “He was only trying to be a good friend to me,” he adds on, and Jared knows that’ll get his mother. She was always telling him how Evan is _such_ a good influence on him and that he should be nicer to him.

This time, when his mom speaks, it’s genuine. “Alright, I hear you,” she says, a bit resigned. I promise Jared won’t get in trouble.” He watches as Evan releases his white knuckle grip on his bag. From his angle, he can see angry red lines on Evan’s palms and fingers from where the zippers had dug into them.

“Thank you Mrs. Kleinman.” Evan smiles at her even as his shaking hands move to hoist his backpack onto his shoulder. “I’ll see you on Monday,” he says, turning to look at Jared, expressionless. With an almost imperceptible nod, he turns and gets out and walks into his home all without looking back.

The rest of their drive home is silent, though less uncomfortable than on the way to Evan’s house. He really had talked his mom down from whatever rant she had prepared for Jared when they had gotten home. In the end, when she and his father sit him down and ask him for the full story of what happened, he decides to tell them the truth, which is uncommon in his interactions with his parents these days. As his mom debates with his dad on if he should get any extra punishment, he reflects on the events of the day and comes to the conclusion he and Evan will always have each other’s back from now on. And maybe he falls just a bit more in love with Evan. How can he not, when he had watched Evan face one of his biggest fears for him?

Now, if only he could do the same.

* * *

It’s been around two years since Jared first realized he might like Evan more than it was normal for one guy to like another, and he finds himself in almost the same situation as then, though this time he's more resigned to it. It's become a constant in his life. The sky is blue. He has an endless pile of homework due. He's in love with Evan Hansen. Not that anyone knows that third fact, even if he’s come to terms with it, there’s no way he’s foolish enough to let anyone know. He’s also learned that with a sharp enough tongue, people will pay attention to what he says instead of what he is, so he cracks his jokes at the expense of others and hopes that by painting the target on other people, they’ll be too busy to place their own on him.

They’re watching movies in his basement again, though this time Evan has pestered him into watching something that had just come out that he had missed in theaters. He risks a glance at Evan, and finds that Evan’s head is tilted back and resting against the edge of the couch. He’s asleep, he realizes. _During the movie he picked,_ Jared thinks, incredulously. “See if I ever let you choose the movie again,” he mutters to himself as he gets up to find a blanket for Evan. If he’s going to sleep on the couch (again) he might as well be warm.

He grabs two blankets—one for himself, and another that is unofficially Evan’s (he uses it every time he’s over for the night)—out of the basket in the corner and drapes it over him. He settles back down onto the couch, suitably far enough from Evan, and turns his attention back to the movie (so what, it’s more interesting than he expected and now he wants to see how it ends), though he lowers the volume, mindful not to wake Evan up now that he’s asleep.

It’s another half hour before the movie is over and the credits are rolling before he dares turn his attention back to Evan. He stares for a long while at him; long enough that the credits have since ended and the television auto-plays the next movie. 

And he thinks that sitting here in the dark, with only the light of the television and its quiet murmur to fill the room, Evan snoring softly on the couch beside him, and not another soul around in what feels like the entire world, he’s brave enough for this, just this once.

“I love you,” he whispers at the sleeping lump on the couch next to him, practically inaudibly to anyone who isn’t himself. He feels the vibrations of his words from his throat as he speaks, trying out how the words feel on his tongue and in the air between them. Instantly, he feels something in him recoil and he knows he’s made a mistake. Something instinctual within him shies away from those words. He can’t put words to it yet, but he knows he can’t ever let himself say those words in that way again.

* * *

They kind of begin to drift apart, the summer after sophomore year. It’s not Evan’s fault, but Jared is sick of being heartsick. It's been literal years and he has nothing to show for it. He’s annoyed at himself for how much of his time he spends thinking about the other boy and how it’ll never lead anywhere, so why bother?

He begins to make sure Evan knows they’re family friends, and just that, when they see each other in the fall, and so they slowly grow apart. He remembers the first time when Evan had referred to him as his friend, he had corrected him saying they were just “family friends,” and he can track the look of momentary confusion on Evan’s face that would eventually change to annoyance throughout the year.

Jared starts sitting with other people he has classes with during lunch sometimes, even though he barely talks to them, even if he doesn’t actually like any of them and he can tell the feeling is mutual, even if he rather be sitting with Evan. He tells Evan he’ll sit with him tomorrow and then he doesn’t. He joins the robotics club, which meets after school and he does find genuinely interesting, and so now his mom doesn’t pick up him and Evan from school anymore. He assumes Evan takes the bus home, but he doesn’t know and he never asks. When Evan turns to him during class when instructed to pair up, Jared pretends he doesn’t notice and is already asking someone else to be his partner.

Still, Jared will forget sometimes, to be distant. He forgets that he’s not supposed to be friends with Evan anymore and he’ll pass by him in the hall and instinctively give him a genuine smile, and Evan will smile back, surprised by the new uncharacteristic kindness of it. And then Jared’s heart will constrict in his chest and everything will crash back into him, that he needs to stay away for his own selfish good.

He doesn’t know where he first heard this proverb, but then again who remembers how they first heard all the common sayings? Regardless, the words “absence makes the heart grow fonder” echoes in his head and mocks him when he has his doubts about what he’s doing. Angrily and bitterly, he repeats to himself a mantra and a retort of “you don’t have a heart” all while drowning in his own emotions, as if he’ll believe his own lie if he says it enough times.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. I've been messing with the Sincerely Me scene all week and it just hasn't hit the tone I wanted, so at the risk of getting stuck on it forever, here's the chapter. That scene in particular might get overhauled in the future.
> 
> I just vaguely finished plotting the 6th chapter last night so we got an idea of where this all ends up, folks! Now all that's left is ahem... writing it. Wish me luck.

From the moment he opens his stupid, idiot, foolish, heartsick mouth, offering to help Evan with his email problem, he knows he’s made a mistake. Funnily enough, he keeps doing that when Evan Hansen is involved. _Too late to back out now,_ he thinks, as he accepts the bargain deal for twenty dollars he knows he’s never going to actually cash in on. It’s been too late for him ever since he was twelve and sitting in the dark with his best friend.

* * *

As he sits there and types the cheesiest advice he can come up with, he can’t help but reflect on the kernel of truth in it and how he should probably take what he writes to heart. He shifts uncomfortably, suddenly aware of the fact that Evan is watching him write this in real time. Which is probably why he starts throwing in the jokes. When he gets scolded for it, at least the tension that only he feels is broken.

“ _I’ll try to be more nice,_ ” he types, and hopes that it’s true, even if the only thing stopping him is himself. He feels bad, for all the times he’s patted Evan on the shoulder and called him a family friend or pretended not to notice him when they passed by each other in the hallway. Still, he clings to the belief that the good it does him outweighs the harm it causes Evan, even if the way his pulse quickens when the other boy is around and the hurt looks he catches whenever he dismisses him plaintively gives evidence otherwise.

As he types “ _our friendship goes beyond your average kind of bond,_ ” he wonders if he’s being too transparent. Does Evan know he means this? That a part of him still wants this to be true? That even though he’s been actively sabotaging his relationship with Evan for the past two years, he still wonders what where he might be had he not?

Maybe he _is_ , because Evan, who has been watching for this last bit without comment, suddenly decides to go on a tangent in the middle of the email, making sure to let the Murphys and him know that nothing ever happened between Connor and him.

He doesn’t bother calling out the fact that the tangent seems completely out of place or would be suspicious to anyone who read the letter more than once. Not after Evan dismissed him earlier on this topic. He just watches with a bitter taste in his mouth as Evan denies. 

“ _All you gotta do is believe you can be who you wanna be,_ ” and fuck, does he hope he can be something other than this, as he feels his life starting to spiral back out of control when he’s too close to Evan. Maybe if he believes hard enough, he’ll forget any inconvenient feelings he has and can just make rational decisions when it comes to Evan. When it comes to himself. “ _Sincerely, me._ ” He signs off the email and he finds that he means it. It’s easier, hiding these pieces of truth into letters that are supposed to be from someone else. It lets him have the distance he needs to hide behind and still try to tell Evan all the words he cannot speak.

* * *

“Or no, wait, you love trees. That’s weird. Isn’t that weird?” Jared says, trying again to point out the ridiculousness of the situation, to bring Evan back down to the ground and remind him that _none of this is real_. He has to remember that, right? That they’re lying, that Connor isn’t his best friend, that he didn’t actually know him.

He waits for a response, but instead of any reply, the call drops. Shocked, he closes out of the application as he seethes in his desk chair. He considers messaging Evan and telling him to call him back when he gets the chance but he’s not sure that he would ever get that call, so instead he closes his laptop and tries not to chew on his lip, a bad habit he indulges in whenever he’s angry.

He doesn’t know what the hell Evan’s problem is, but he’s really not appreciating the fact that even though he was the one who’s been with Evan every step of the way on this journey of lies, it feels like Evan is now trying to shut him out. And maybe it’s just his paranoia, the voice that’s been nagging him for years that Evan has only tolerated him for as long as he has is because he’s his only friend. But now, now he’s getting approached by all the _popular_ kids at school, all curious about Connor Murphy and his supposed best friend, and he doesn’t need Jared anymore. He doesn’t want to be reading into everything too much, but he’s scared. Like he always is.

The abruptness of the end of their conversation leaves him feeling at a loss for what to do. It’s a rare day where he has no homework due the next morning, so it’s not like he has any reason to be home. So on an impulse and a need to get away from this, he turns his phone off and leaves it on his desk. Grabbing his keys and a light jacket, he yells out to no one in particular as he walks out the front door that he’s going to Evan’s.

That’s not where he’s going, obviously. Right now, he kind of doesn’t want to ever see Evan again for as long as he’s alive (even if the other part of him also desperately wants reassurance that Evan doesn’t hate him).

The sun sets sooner and sooner each day now, so by this point in the evening, it’s already completely dark out. He drives back roads and places he knows will have fewer cars at this time of night. He doesn’t need directions, not that he has any destination in mind. Ever since he was a child, he’s had a strong sense of direction, an awareness of himself and his relation to the larger world around him, and that’s translated well into a sense of physical direction. So, he’s not worried if he’ll be able to find his way back.

He plays music from a burned CD he made the previous summer, after he had gotten his driver’s license. Ambient and electronic music play loud enough that in the car, he may as well be in his own world. There are no street lights here. The sides of the road are surrounded by trees. It’s the kind of road that winds through woods, unimportant and so barely wide enough that two cars could actually fit on it at once. The paint marking the lanes is faded, but in the illumination of his headlights, they’re bright enough.

He eventually comes to a public park. Not the kind children visit to play, but more of a historical site marked as a park for preservation. The illumination from his headlights dies when he turns off the engine, and he’s plunged into darkness. He sits there for a few moments, waiting for his eyes to adjust the rest of the way to the darkness. The moon is mostly full tonight and the sky is clear, so he can see well enough not to trip over anything as he makes his way down the path to the old mill this park is for. He sits down at a commemorative bench along the path when he reaches the mill, listening to the steady rush of water fall over the mill dam and taking in the crisp fall air, faintly scented like pine trees. The moonlight reflects off the water in the mill pond and he stares.

He breathes.

And nothing else.

He spares no thoughts for Evan or for The Connor Project or for anything in his life. In and out. 

Until it’s just him and the night.

He doesn’t move again for he doesn’t know how long. Long enough that the moonlight that had shone on the water’s surface was now mostly hidden behind trees surrounding the mill pond. Long enough that despite the jacket, the chill of nighttime autumn air begins to creep in.

Eventually, he comes back to himself.

He hopes that if he sits here forever, the sun will never rise again and he can continue this quiet and lonesome existence in the dark, with no emails and lies and deteriorating friendships and inconvenient feelings. It’s a nice thought, but not one that’ll ever happen. Reality will always come crashing back in and the sun will arise whether he wants it to or not. Soon this quiet respite will end. 

He thinks about those people who lose their identity and run off after a traumatic event. What was it called? Right, a _fugue state_. Even though he knows they aren’t in a right state of mind, he can’t help but wonder if they had been happier, being somewhere else, someone else.

He indulges in his own temporary departure from everything, until the cold begins to become unbearable.

When he drives back, it’s silent, and when he returns home, it’s dark; no one greets him.

When he falls asleep, it’s to a quiet mind from a night of illusive, elusive peace.

* * *

“You know, when you really stop and think about it, Connor being dead, that’s pretty much the best thing that’s ever happened to you, isn’t it?” And that’s a harsh thing to say, but he can’t help but feel bitter and betrayed, and he’s always been loose lipped with the harsh truth as long as it doesn’t involve himself.

“That’s a horrible thing to say,” Evan says, unknowingly echoing his own thoughts.

“Well, but, no, think about it. If Connor hadn’t died, no one would even know who you are. I mean, people at school actually talk to you now. You’re almost… popular. Which is just…” he trails off for a moment. He had been about to say “ _unfair_ ,” but that would have betrayed himself, so instead he uses someone else’s words to say what he cannot. “Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles,” he finishes.

“I don’t care about any of that. I don’t care if people at school know who I am. All I wanted was to—”

“—Help the Murphys,” they both say simultaneously. Evan looks almost taken aback that he’s finished his sentence for him, which is surprising, considering he’s heard that phrase from him practically as many times as he’s seen him in the last couple of weeks. “Yeah. I know. You keep saying that.”

Evan opens his mouth to respond, but before he can, Jared sees movement from behind Evan's shoulder and hears a voice call out his name.

"Hey Jared." Great. It's Zoe Murphy. He watches her kiss Evan on the cheek and take his hand and he tells himself it's fine even as he can feel an ugly pang of jealousy blossom to life in his chest.

It's not her fault, but he knows when he isn’t wanted.

Still, he can't help but mutter "look at you, helping the Murphys," as he runs from the scene.

It’s a familiar action.

* * *

Even if Evan is too busy with the Connor Project, with Zoe, with everything else but hanging out with him, he still has his parent's liquor cabinet and they are still out of town for the weekend. It's ridiculously easy to pick the lock on it, especially with the lock picking toolset he had received from Evan a few years ago for his birthday.

He ignores whatever possible shitty symbolism could be interpreted from that and grabs a half empty bottle of what the label says is _scotch_. Unscrewing the cap, he takes a sniff, which he really should have known better than to do by this point. It’s never pleasant, still, what it brings is what he’s after. He doesn’t bother bringing a cup.

There’s a record player in the basement. It rarely gets used these days, but he’s in a maudlin mood, and he wants to feel old, so he wanders down and fumbles with a lamp until a dim light spreads throughout the room. He switches on the power and blows at the fine layer of dust that has settled on the turntable. Turning to the box of records on the floor beside it, he fingers through the choices, before finally settling on a disc from what he’s pretty sure is the ‘70s. He places the record down on the turntable and lowers the cartridge down onto the lead-in groove. There’s a few moments before the music starts, which he takes to drop down on the couch and brings the bottle to his mouth for a large gulp. He’s got a lot of ground to cover if he’s going to finish this by the end of the night like he wants to.

He sits there in the semi-darkness on the couch in his basement, _Can’t Buy A Thrill_ quietly filtering throughout the room, and stews in his own bitterness as well as the scotch’s and throws himself a pity party, reveling in the petty vindication it makes him feel. He’s melodramatic and takes himself too seriously because no one else will. A passing thought tells him maybe if every other word out of his mouth wasn’t a joke, he wouldn’t be treated like one. He has no rebuttal but to take another swig.

If his throat closes up and there are wet tracks down his face, well, no one is around to tell.

* * *

“Fuck you, Evan. Asshole,” he spits back even as he finds himself running away, like he always does. He desperately wants to let Evan know just how much he’s been hurt by him, to claw open his chest and show him the bleeding center and to impart on him that it was his fault, so that maybe Evan will finally understand a fraction of the grief he’s caused him.

But he doesn’t. He can’t.

 _I loved you,_ he doesn’t say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not essential to listen to but here's the songs on the drive playlist I personally had in mind.  
> Drive playlist:  
> [All The Things Lost - MS MR](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKYGp6Pt2Dw)  
> [Bell - Chromatics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmDO4S1VmMs)  
> [Bukowski - Modest Mouse](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr_B2IOUYSw)  
> [Idioteque - Radio Head](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svwJTnZOaco)  
> [Intro - The xx](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFq6nnw7xg0)  
> [The Last Goodbye - The Kills](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhILJOeQkRc)  
> [My Only Friend - Phantogram](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvohYTnfY5I)  
> [Where The Boats Go - M83](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B7-mKohEcc)
> 
> And the album Can't Buy A Thrill was chosen because of the song [Dirty Work by Steely Dan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrE_cDvcgJg), which is off that album. This song is on the [official Jared Kleinman playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4ostSpAhxxFd81PS6TaecY?si=Q2vVx428RJmlptZueUht6w), which is compiled by Bway principle Jareds, so give that a listen if you haven't before.


	3. Chapter 3

It’s really rather unfortunate that Jared put off taking one of his English gen-ed credits for a year, because he’s now in a class that’s almost exclusively taken by freshmen, exemplified by the fact that Evan Hansen is sitting just a few rows in front of him, unaware of his presence and waiting for the lecture to start.

 _I knew I should have checked the class roster before showing up,_ he thinks, angry at himself for getting into this situation. But it’s not like he can take another section of this class either, Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays at 11:15 AM is the only one of the _ten_ sections of this class that will fit into his schedule. It’s ridiculous and he has many words about it for the provost if he ever meets him, but that’s a different matter. Being angry about that isn’t going to change the fact that he’s in this class and he needs the credit.

The professor clears her throat and it’s syllabus day, so he stops paying attention almost immediately. He’s capable of reading the syllabus by himself, thank you very much. Jared idly goes to look up Evan on social media, before coming to a blocked profile. _Oh. I forgot I did that,_ he thinks. Sometime after his fight with Evan in high school, he had deleted and blocked Evan from his digital life (and in the process also did some pettier things, like changing the administrative account password on The Connor Project website). He unblocks him and starts scrolling. He’s reminded of his mom telling him that Evan had taken a gap year after high school as he scrolls. The updates are sparse, which helps, because in almost no time, he’s caught up on the last two years of Evan’s life, or least the last two years that he’s shared publicly. He still has a stupid number of followers from The Connor Project. 

He’s still busy thinking about how Evan must have spent the past two years when the words “attendance sheet” catch his attention and he looks up to see the professor handing a piece of paper to a student in the front row. He watches anxiously as the paper begins to make its way down the rows, until Evan, in the third, is passed the paper by his neighbor. He scans it for a few seconds, searching for his own name, but he must come across Jared’s first, because he turns his head sharply around and scours the class. Jared forces himself not to shrink away and instead meet his gaze when Evan’s eyes eventually come to his.

They stare at each other for no more than a few seconds before Evan is turning back to the paper in front of him and presumably marking off his name, passing it onto the next person in his row. When the paper finally reaches him, he looks for his own name and finds that the little box next to it has already been checked off. He looks up at the back of Evan’s head. Well, if that’s not an invitation, he doesn’t know what is.

He doesn’t actually have to pay attention to this first lecture, which is convenient because there’s no way he would be able to think about anything else but the fact that in approximately forty minutes, it will be the first time he’s going to be talking to Evan Hansen since winter of senior year.

The rest of the lecture passes by with a slowness that makes him want to tear out his own hair. He spends the entire time trying to imagine how this conversation will go and his mind goes everywhere with it. By the end of class, he’s sure that Evan cussing him out and telling him he’s been served the moment they’re alone, or telling him they’re going to be best friends until the end of forever are both equally likely options. Normally, he’s not rude enough to start packing up before the professor stops speaking, but today, when it’s about time for class to be over, all his shit is in his bag and he’s jittering his leg under the table, ready to leave.

The professor finally dismisses them, and Evan must be equally ready, because he immediately stands and turns to look at Jared, tilting his head towards one of the doors.

They both make their way out of the classroom. Evan’s out first, and so Jared looks around before spotting him standing off to the side by the less busy administrative section of the building.

He walks over, apprehensive.

“You have class anytime soon?” Jared asks as he approaches.

“Not for another two hours.” Evan fidgets with the hem of his shirt. 

“Wow, shitty schedule,” he says, because it is, and he doesn’t know what else to say. He had expected a lot of things, but stifling awkwardness wasn’t one of them.

“Yeah. You?”

“In an hour, though, I scheduled this time to be my lunch break.”

“You wanna get something to eat, then?”

“Yeah, Roth fine for you?”

“Sure.”

And then they’re off, walking side by side to the nearby dining hall, and if Jared thought the conversation that led to this was awkward, the silent walk they have is a million times worse. 

After the world’s longest walk that only takes five minutes, they finally sit down with their food at a booth in Roth.

“How’ve you been?” he starts off, wincing internally at how weak that sounds.

“Good, I guess.”

“That’s… good. How was uh, your gap year? What’d you do during it?” he asks, trying to get some specifics out of Evan to keep the conversation going, though it looks like Evan is just as much at a loss of what to say as he is.

“It was good… Worked at uh, Pottery Barn and did a few classes at Suffolk so I wasn’t coming in an entire year late. My advisor says combined with my high school credit, I’ll probably graduate on time. So, yeah.”

The specific topic to talk about helps, because when he prompts Evan more on his classes, Evan soon is talking about his plan for his spring semester schedule even though the course catalog for the spring isn’t out yet. Jared finds it frankly amazing that Evan has even thought about spring classes. _We’re on week one of the fall_ , he thinks to himself. He certainly only has the vaguest idea of what he’ll be doing in the spring, but then again, Evan’s always been one for meticulous plans to help with his anxiety, even if those plans usually fall apart.

Evan must realize he’s ranting because he cuts himself off in the middle of talking about a forensic anthropology class their college apparently offers.

“What about you? Isn’t this class usually taken by like, freshmen?”

“The class didn’t fit in my schedule last year so I put it off until now. Which I guess is why you’re in my class.”

“You behind or something in your curriculum?” he asks, looking concerned.

“What? Oh, no. I’m actually really ahead. I’m enrolled in the five year master’s program but I’m planning on finishing it in four, since I had a lot of credits from high school that transferred.”

At this, Evan snorts. “Wow, you’re really a giant nerd.”

And just like that, the tension is broken.

Jared kicks Evan under the table lightly and pretends to be offended.

“Hey, well at least I’ll be a nerd with a master’s degree in four years,” he shoots back.

“Touché.”

“Touche,” he says, pronouncing it incorrectly, because he knows it’ll bother Evan, and feels a returning kick connect with his shin.

“Hey—” he cries out, before a genius idea hits him, much like the foot only moments before. “Ouché,” he says, making a fake accented cry of hurt and the look on Evan’s face when the dots connect is murderous. He can’t help but laugh at the outrage, which makes Evan crack up, too, after a few seconds of trying to keep a straight face.

They spend the rest of Jared’s lunch break talking and the time flies by without either of them noticing. So when Jared checks his phone out of habit, his eyes land on the digital clock blinking back at him and he realizes first that they’ve been talking for almost an hour straight and second that he’ll be late for his next class if he doesn’t _run_ for it.

“Oh _shit_ , it’s 1:20, I have to go,” he says, panicking and packing up his stuff.

Evan checks the time himself and startles.

“Leave your plate here, I’ll take it with mine when I leave. Hurry, get to your class,” he says, making shooing motions at Jared.

“Alright, bye,” he yells over his shoulder, as he hoists his backpack onto it, already power walking away, waiting until he leaves the building to run. At the last moment before he’s out of earshot, he turns around and stops.

“See you on Friday after class?” he calls out, hoping.

See you then, now go!” Evan says, smiling with his response and pointing at the door.

Jared takes off and it’s only after he practically falls into a seat, breathless, in the back of the classroom for his next class, that he realizes he and Evan hadn’t even touched the subject of their falling out for the entire hour they sat there.

* * *

They don’t ever talk about it, probably because neither of them want to bring it up. It’s so much easier to fall into casual and amicable chats after class than it is to bring up old hurts, and so they eat lunch together two times a week (Evan has lab during this time on Mondays) and crack easy jokes and neither of them ever say it explicitly, but it becomes apparent that there’s a boundary of this being the only time they ever hang out. They keep to the seats they sat in the first day of class and don’t attempt to move next to each other. They nod when they pass by each other around campus but don’t stop to chat. They stick to talking about academics and movies and anything but themselves. What’s that word Alana had used so much back when they were in high school? Right. _Acquaintances_. That’s what he and Evan are now. Acquaintances.

What finally breaks the dam is a partner project, because of course it does. In class, their professor announces that for the last book of the semester they go over, they’re going to be doing student lead discussions for each chapter and they will do so in groups of two, and that they should report back to her with their partner by next class. _You don’t have to work with Evan_ , a part of him thinks. He’s on fairly good terms with the person he sits next to during class and she would probably agree to work with him if he asked, but he also remembers all the times in high school where he would pretend he didn’t see Evan’s attempt at getting his attention for group work and he knows that he shouldn’t do that again. Plus, it’s not as if he still likes Evan, as he got over that for good during their fallout, so everything will be fine, right?

Jared suggests the library as the place to meet up, a suitably neutral place even if he would rather not drag his ass to campus on a weekend. They get most of the work done quickly enough, but it still takes several hours because halfway through they start losing focus. Jared finds himself showing Evan a cat video he sees on social media and realizes they’ve both stopped working for at least half an hour at this point.

“Evan.”

“Yeah?” he replies, not looking up from his phone, which from the sound coming from its speakers, sounds like it’s playing a cooking video.

“We should probably get back to work.”

At this, Evan groans, realizing how long they’ve been distracted, too. Jared watches as Evan leans forward and slowly drops his head right onto the table in front of him.

“I don’t wanna,” comes a voice, a bit muffled from being spoken into the table. He sits like that for a few moments, before sitting back up again and sighing, defeated by the relentless workload of school. “I’m hungry. What if we get dinner first and then come back to it?”

Jared’s frowns. “But we’re almost done! We just have the summary and—” and then his stomach makes an audible growl. He sees Evan smile, and knows he’s lost.

“Fine. Come on, if we’re going to get dinner let’s go off campus. I don’t want shitty dining hall food.”

They pack up their stuff and walk out of the library, greeted by the sunset. The way the library entrance is situated makes it so that Jared has to bring his hand up to shield his eyes from the setting sun that shines directly into his eyes.

“Oh, I didn’t realize we’d been in there for that long,” Evan remarks. It’s easy to lose track of time on the lower floors of the library, which are underground.

“Yeah. Christ, no wonder we were so hungry.”

They end up at a sushi and ramen restaurant near campus and by the time they’re done eating—which takes forever because they don’t stop talking as they eat—it’s nine at night and completely dark outside. They leave their waiter a large tip, feeling guilty at having stayed for so long and occupying the table, and their conversation and laughter puffs into vapor as they walk briskly back to Jared’s car in the chilly late autumn night air.

When they get back in the car, as he’s about to put the keys into the ignition, Evan’s arm comes up to stop him, resting on his inner elbow. Jared turns to give a questioning look to Evan in the dark car, who is backlit by a distant street lamp. The look he receives in return that he can barely make out in the dim light tells him that they’ve finally come to this. They sit in Jared’s car in the back of a nearly empty parking lot, quiet and dark except for the occasional car headlights that roar by on the road behind them. A whole two years after they both thought their friendship had ended for good, they talk about old grievances and give apologies for hurts caused. 

And by the end of the night, they’re _friends_ again (even if their project isn’t finished, but that can be saved for another time).

* * *

They start hanging out outside of their usual lunch meetings. Evan comes over to Jared’s apartment on occasion and Jared will stop by Evan’s dorm on Tuesday afternoons when he has an evening lab and doesn’t want to drive all the way back to his place. Their lives begin to entangle themselves back together in a way they hadn't been since early high school, and he almost forgets that they had ever stopped being friends. It’s natural, being friends with Evan even after so long.

One afternoon when they’re studying at a local café, Evan laughs at one of his dumb jokes that he makes only because he knows Evan will get a kick out of it, and Jared’s heart does a weird flip in his chest.

Fuck. So apparently he’s not as over Evan as he thought he was.

 _Fuck!_ He ignores it for now, knowing that later that night when he’s alone in his room he’s going to have a complete crisis over this, and instead continues doing his ridiculous and maybe a bit offensive impression of this one annoying kid in his major he’s told Evan about before and watches as Evan doubles over with laughter.

And he’s only just barely friends with Evan again, even if they’re both being more honest with each other this go around, there’s no way he’s going to risk it all by telling him that he’s kind of (still? newly? he isn’t sure) in love with him. Their relationship is still so tentative and he needs to be careful not to screw up their second chance. So he swallows down all the feelings and words he’s had for years and when he and Evan finally catch their breaths, and instead of saying anything of importance, Jared opens his mouth only to ask if Evan wants anything while he’s ordering.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We will just ignore that I was considering a weekly update schedule for this, but things are coming along at least... okay in the second half of this fic so it (partially) exists on paper!
> 
> Also, if you were curious, Jared and Evan attend SUNY Stony Brook in New York.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't you hate it when you— _checks notes_ —accidentally write a chapter that's as long as the first half of the entire fic combined? Enjoy ;)

Jared’s roommate gets a last minute acceptance for a co-op next year. He’s happy for him, he really is, but it leaves Jared in a sticky situation, and so for a few frantic weeks, he’s dusting off his Facebook account and posting in various student housing groups to ask if anyone is looking to sublet, because there’s absolutely no way he’s moving; the rent here is criminally cheap (he wonders if it’s secretly a human trafficking setup sometimes) and the complex is stupidly close to campus.

Unfortunately, all he gets in return is radio silence. _Do I give off creeper vibes or something_ , he wonders when his third post in as many weeks gets a resounding zero responses. He decides to blame it on the fact that he’s never changed his icon from the default grey one Facebook provides and maybe everyone thinks he’s a scammer. Personally, he wouldn’t trust some random no-icon account, but there’s no way he’s uploading a picture of himself to the predatory vacuum of social media. Reluctantly, he starts asking around to acquaintances and classmates if anyone is looking to sublet next year, but he must be the unluckiest guy in the world, because he comes up no dice.

Evan’s complaining to Jared about how the latest apartment complex he toured had an actual cockroach scurry across the floor as the tour guide showed him the kitchen (the last one Evan had talked about had a twenty minute commute, which frankly sounds even worse than any infestation problems) while Jared sits on Evan’s coffee table, eating his snacks (the last of the Goldfish) and nodding along at all the right moments.

“As much as I love my mom, I’m not about to move back home given the choice. You know she once told me she wanted to go _with_ me to college?”

“That sounds—”

The obvious solution to both their problems hits him.

“Oh.”

It seems to occur to both of them at the same time because before Jared can even say it, Evan’s already talking.

“Hey Jared, didn’t you mention you were looking for a roommate now that Elijah’s gone next year?”

With very little discussion, Evan has signed the lease. Just like that, they’re going to be living together for at least a school year, and after Evan moves in fall semester, Jared finds that their lives fit together almost alarmingly well. They do almost everything together, from grocery runs (totally reasonable for roommates), to meeting up on campus to eat lunch together (so what, they used to do that before), to falling asleep practically on top of each other during their occasional marathon movie nights (okay, well that one he can’t say much about).

They see each other at their highest and lowest, from excited screaming over professional accomplishments to stress induced breakdowns at the early hours of the morning. Evan comes home to Jared sobbing into a blanket on their couch after completely bombing an exam and convincing himself he would flunk out, and Jared sits on their kitchen floor with Evan at four AM on a school night and listens to him vent about his shitty dad who has recently taken to inadequately trying to reconnect with him. Evan is the first to know when Jared hangs up after a successful phone interview that he's gotten an offer (“on the spot?” “they fucking gave it to me on the spot!”) and Jared is the one who reads out term project grades to Evan after he's too scared to check for himself (“stop smiling like that and tell—” “ninety-four, holy shit you got the highest grade in the class”).

After all, they live together.

* * *

Jared sneaks a glance at his phone after working on his project for over an hour straight and sitting in the lounge of his department’s building for even longer. There’s not many notifications. Most of them are spam or unimportant, but he does have a text from Evan, which puts a smile on his face. It’s a meme he’s already seen reposted dozens of times on various programming subreddits and another text underneath that says “ _idk if u have already seen this but i hope u find it funny_.” It’s not very funny at all, but he appreciates that Evan thought of him when he saw it. Jared laughs anyways.

“Hey! Jared!”

He looks up guiltily, having been caught, to see his friend and one of his group project partners, Kay, scolding him. She points to his laptop screen, which he should’ve been focusing on.

“Sorry, sorry. I’ll get back to it. Fuckin’ slave driver,” he mutters, intentionally loud enough that she can hear the remark.

“Well, it’s not like our other project partners are actually gonna get any work done so unless we wanna fail this…” She trails off, dejected by the thought of their other two group members who haven’t even so much as responded to their group text thread about the project. They both sit in silence for a few moments, staring distantly in the vague direction of their laptop screens, remembering the staggering amount of work they have left, before she shakes her head and switches topics, gesturing to his phone. “So what’s got you so happy?”

“Oh,” he says, brightening again, glad to not be thinking about multithreading. “Evan sent me a meme. Here—” He holds his phone out for Kay to see.

She stares at it, unamused. She’s probably seen it countless times, too. “You know memes are supposed to be, like, _funny_ , right?”

“Yeah…” He trails off, knowing how this is about to sound but saying it anyways. “I know. It’s only funny ‘cause Evan sent it. Like, it’s funny because he thought I would find it funny.”

She rolls her eyes at this. “Oh my God. Jared. When the hell are you gonna ask this guy out. You talk about him like… nonstop. And more importantly, I have to _hear_ about it.”

Jared sighs. “It’s more complicated than that. I… It’s just a long story.”

There’s no way he’s about to tell her about, well, any of it. He doesn’t want to be here until midnight.

“A long story that I bet boils down to you having a crush on him, and you should either shoot your shot or get over it.”

“Well, you’re skipping over a lot of details and context but—” He catches the single eyebrow she has raised at him ( _seriously, how does it go that high?_ ).

She’s not wrong. He really needs to pick one of these things, because he’s _not_ spending another eight years of his life being in love with Evan and doing absolutely nothing and everything about it. It colored so much of his life growing up and he simply refuses to let it continue to haunt him.

His silence tells her she’s right.

“Really, what’s the worst that could happen?”

“I get rejected and he gets creeped out by me living with him and begins to hate me and tells everyone how creepy I am for crushing on my best friend and then I die loveless and alone.”

He’s gotten a lot of unimpressed looks from Kay today and this rewards him with another one. “Okay, first of all, that was a rhetorical question, and secondly, now you’re just catastrophizing.”

“I know,” he says, dragging out the word into a groan. “But what if it happens? I can’t risk it.”

“Oh my God, Jared. That’s not going to happen. But if you do nothing then what, you’re just gonna sit around and mope about it forever?”

“No! Maybe? …I don’t know?” He drops his face into his hands. “ _Fuck_.”

An alarm rings on his phone. It reads 7:30 PM. “Dammit. I swear we’ll never get this shit done. I gotta go. I promised Evan I would help him review for his biochem exam tonight, sorry.”

She laughs, good-naturedly. “Yeah? Well I’m not going to stop you date night with your boyfriend. Have fun,” she says with a wink.

“Shut up,” Jared sputters at the accusation. “I’ll say something about it eventually.”

“Eventually? Are you fucking kidding me? Eventually my _ass_ , you’ve been avoiding this for what, years now?” Jared’s suddenly glad he never told her just how long he’s known Evan or else he’d seem all the more pathetic. “No, you’re going to do this before we meet up again to finish this shit.”

“What? No, isn’t this due—”

“—how does Saturday sound?”

“... But today’s Thursday.”

“Yes, and?”

“That doesn’t seem like a lot of time to prepare.”

“Has this not been years in the making?”

“... I hate it when you call me out on my shit, you know that right?”

“It’s good for you, and someone needs to do it before you drown in it.”

Jared makes a face. “That’s a great mental image.”

“Although,” she says, bringing her hand up to her chin and pretending to look thoughtful, “that might explain the smell…”

“Oh haha, real funny. Some real high brow humor here.”

“I can literally see you smiling right now.”

“You’re the worst,” he says as he shuts his laptop and begins to pack up. “I’m going to email Dr. Badr to ask if it’s too late to switch groups.”

“That guy’s never responded to a student email in his life,” she replies, rolling her eyes. “So how does five PM sound?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll see you.” He turns to leave.

“Hold on. You promise you’ll talk to Evan before Saturday?”

“Yes, fine!” he says, exasperated, throwing his hands into the air. “Try not to become even more insufferable until then.”

“This is for your own good!” she calls out to him as he’s walking away.

As Jared walks to the parking lot to where his car is, he contemplates getting better friends for the millionth time.

* * *

Jared bursts into their apartment brashly, announcing his presence with a loud “I’m home!”

Evan looks up, unimpressed as this is Jared’s usual entrance, from where he sits at their living room table. _Wow, unpopular today, aren’t we?_ Jared thinks to himself. He takes in the room and it looks like a hurricane has gone through it. There are papers sprawled all over it, and some have even spilled onto the floor surrounding him. Evan’s always been one to hand take notes.

“And I brought food,” Jared adds on, holding up a bag of Mexican takeout from a place he knows Evan likes. At that, Evan smiles.

“Welcome back!”

“Oh, so you’re only happy to see me when I bring food, huh?” he says as he sets down his backpack on the floor and food on the kitchen counter.

“Yup,” Evan replies, playing along.

“You wound me,” he says, while mock fainting. “Who’s going to help you study for your exam if I’m bleeding out on the floor here?”

“I’m sure I’ll manage.”

“Fine. Guess I’ll take me and my food to my room, then.” He makes exaggerated motions, slowly moving in the direction of his room.

“Wait, no. Jared!”

He turns around, using his socks to very slowly pivot around on the laminate wood flooring and face Evan. “Yeah?”

“Jared—my _dearest_ Jared. You wouldn’t let me starve, right?”

Jared rolls his eyes even as he’s grabbing the plastic utensils out of the bag.

“In a heartbeat,” he says as he brings the bag of takeout over to the table where Evan sits, carefully avoiding stepping on any note sheets that lay between him and the empty spot next to Evan. "Okay," he says as he plops down and opens boxes. "So get me up to speed on what this shit’s about." He talks with his mouth full, gesturing to the papers spread in front of them.

So Evan begins to talk about spectroscopy theory (Jared can’t even _pronounce_ that), mostly in-between bites to be polite, but sometimes with his mouth full. That's how their "study" sessions go, generally. It's really just Evan talking through all the material, explaining it to Jared, who has no training in the topic, and trying to put it in terms that he will be able to understand, given that Jared has absolutely no knowledge of what he’s talking about (“plank’s constant?” “no, _Planck’s_ constant”).

Evan always thanks him at the end of their study sessions for letting him ramble about things Jared has not the slightest clue about, but honestly, he thinks he gets the better end of the deal because he could listen to Evan talk about anything for hours on end. Maybe Kay isn't that wrong, after all. And now that the thought is in his mind, it's all he can think about for the last fifteen minutes Evan talks. He sits there, daring himself to say something, and it’s only his promise to Kay that finally pushes him to act. He’s more reliable than he is a coward.

“So apparently Kay thinks we’re dating,” he blurts out right in the middle of Evan explaining something or other about nuclear spin. It’s not a complete lie. Kay did call Evan his boyfriend, even if it was a joke. And this is a risk but he can back out, if it looks like it’s going the wrong way. He can always laugh it off as his crazy friend (Evan’s definitely heard enough stories about her to believe that) and they can go back to Evan’s studies, but _if_ … 

There’s a pause. Maybe it’s too long, but he can’t tell because currently every millisecond seems to stretch out into hours, and he doesn’t dare look at Evan to see his expression. “Any reason why she thinks that?” comes a reply, finally.

Probably because he’s head over heels for Evan (again) and he looks like a lovestruck idiot whenever he gets a text from him, but he doesn’t say that out loud.

“I don’t know,” he lies, but he knows it doesn’t sound convincing. He takes just a second too long to start fake laughing, about to dismiss it as just relaying a weird thing his friend said earlier that day.

“It’s just a silly—”

“—Do you want it to be true?” Evan says, cutting him off as Jared had already begun to try to play it off as a joke.

They both fall silent, and Jared knows that Evan is waiting on him to respond. As the seconds pass by, it becomes suffocating. So he speaks some sort of truth.

“I mean, it’s not like I haven’t thought about it before. We do spend like a _lot_ of time together. And who doesn’t wonder what it would be like to date one of their friends?” It’s true. He _has_ had passing thoughts about what it would be like to date any of his friends, but he doesn’t add on the part where he’s spent an extraordinary amount of time considering what it would be like to date Evan, specifically. “But it’d be weird. It’d be so weird. Like, we’ve known each other for as long as either of us can remember.” He speaks way too quickly, every word out his mouth not given nearly enough consideration despite the importance of this. The only thing that keeps him going at this point is momentum. His mouth is moving and words are coming out but when he looks back on this moment, Jared has no idea what he said.

“—It was a yes or no question, Jared.”

That shuts him up. Without even looking, Jared can feel the weight of Evan’s eyes on him. The silence that falls all too quickly once again becomes stifling, not that he felt any better when he was rambling, and he can feel the quiet seconds stretch out.

He stares at the hands in his lap. He wants so badly to find a way out of this conversation and just return to their easy banter they always keep with each other, but for once, he can’t seem to find a way to talk himself out of this; he has no witty comeback, no insightful joke to make, and all that’s left is how he feels. It’s less courage that drives him and more the fact that he absolutely refuses go back to the unbearable status quo of before, and so he—

“Yes," he finally admits, turning his head ever so slightly to look at Evan’s face out of the corner of his eye. "Do you?” he asks, hating that his voice comes out as weak and scared as he is.

He can see Evan looking back at him, it’s enough to make him avert his gaze again. He’s looking back down at his now shaking hands again and waiting for his life to end, which is why he doesn’t expect it when he feels Evan crash into his side and a hand on his chin, as lips meet his own.

His first thought is: _ow_ , because Evan has come in with just a bit too much force and his teeth scrape harshly against Jared’s own lips. His second is: _this has to be a joke_ , and then that’s the only thing that runs through his head. It’s surreal, to have something he’s thought about for so long actually happen, and he’s blindsided by it.

When Jared thinks back to this moment, and he does _a lot_ , what he concludes is that he’s dreamed of this moment countless times over the years, and so they’re just that: dreams. He’s gone from reality to something firmly outside of it, because Evan’s lips are on his and that just isn’t something he ever, ever thought would happen, no matter how much he wished and wept over it. And so if this is reality, the only way he can reconcile this, is if it’s a joke.

He pushes Evan off him and jerks back sharply, expression sour. “What kind of sick fucking joke—I mean, I know I say some fucked up stuff sometimes but this is…”

“I thought you—you said—I was just.” Evan starts and stops a lot. “You really thought I was _joking_?” Evan looks and sounds so bewildered by that idea that Jared immediately feels bad for thinking that of him, but it’s not like that’s what he really thought of Evan—it’s just what his worst fears make him think of Evan.

“Yes?” he tries, weakly.

Evan pauses for a few moments, still confused, before his expression suddenly changes, and he levels him with a stare, eyes intense and searching, like he’s looking into Jared’s soul. It makes him feel uncomfortably seen, like Evan can see every single one of his inadequacies, but Jared’s still at a loss for what else to do so he lets him do it. Jared keeps instinctively looking away and breaking eye contact because he feels like he’ll wither away under Evan’s stare if he looks at it head on. At long last Evan finally speaks again.

“I think, I think that’s more your style.”

Jared tilts his head and finally looks back, directly at Evan, and really looks. It’s almost like he’s seeing Evan in a new light; the pall that had been over Jared’s perception of him is finally lifted, and he finally has found a way off the dark road he’s been on. He remembers all the times he’s been shocked and in awe of the bravery (and impulsiveness) in Evan and really it’s no longer any surprise that this is how it goes (the only part that still confuses him is _why him_ , but that can be saved for another day).

“And yours bold strokes,” he says quietly, half to himself and still a bit in awe. “Can we try that again?” he asks, hopeful.

Evan breaks out into a smile brighter than the sun and he can feel himself do the same.

* * *

There's one Sunday evening where Jared is able to convince Evan to come with him to check out this retro gaming store— _Revolution Games_ —one of his classmates told him about. It’s not officially a date—none of their outings have explicitly been agreed upon as dates—but he does realize with a certain giddiness that he and Evan are going somewhere alone now that they’re together, even if it’s just a local gaming store.

When he pushes open the door, it makes the pipe entering noise from Mario and Jared loves this place already. After escaping from a short conversation they’re obligated to engage in with the owner at the counter, they begin to wander the aisles.

At some point, Jared realizes that he and Evan have drifted away from each other in their inspection of anything that catches their eye. He finds himself in a dusty corner, no one else in sight. Taking a closer look at the items on the shelf in front of him, and discovers that he recognizes them. It’s a collection of old _Dreamcast_ games along with a beat up looking console itself. He had one of those as a kid, and he can remember many afternoons where Evan would come over and they would play games on it until his mom said they had to stop. It’s been years since he thought about those afternoons, but he remembers them fondly.

He starts leisurely flipping through a plastic box of games. Some of them have lost their original cases along the way, and so they sit in clear, plastic cases with only sharpie scrawled across the cover in messy handwriting to denote what game each case holds. He recognizes some of the more popular titles from when he had played them himself, but the obscure ones, which make up most of this collection, far outnumber the popular ones.

He’s suddenly hit with an idea, a memory he hasn’t thought about in what must be over a decade at this point, and he begins to flip through the boxes of CDs at a much more rapid pace. He’s going so quickly that he almost misses it when he finds it, sitting in a clear case with the title— _Industrial Spy: Operation Espionage_ —sharpied on the front in black ink, not that the title means anything to anyone that isn’t him or Evan. Staring at the case in his hands for a few seconds, he can’t believe that he’s _actually_ stumbled upon a copy of this shitty game.

When he was a kid, his parents had gotten him a couple of bargain bin Dreamcast games for his birthday and while he had initially been disappointed it wasn’t _Soulcalibur_ like he had been talking about for months, he did eventually get around to playing them. He had roped Evan into helping him try to beat _Industrial Spy_ one afternoon and Evan quickly began to insist that they play it almost every time he came over. The game probably isn’t as hard as he remembers but they had been young and were never able to beat it despite the hours they would spend on the puzzles, lacking the motor and critical thinking skills necessary. Then, several months after they had started playing the game, it corrupted the next time they tried to start it up. He thinks Evan might have cried when he found out (which meant that he cried, too).

He supposes if he were to find a copy of this forgotten game it would be in a dusty corner of a retro game store. After his surprise at finding it fades, the next thought in his mind is that he absolutely _needs_ to tell Evan about this, right this moment. Dropping the game back into the basket, he tears through the aisles at a speed that probably should get him kicked out of the store, until he finds Evan, sitting on the floor and flipping through a graphic novelization.

“Evan!”

The man in question looks up, smile slowly melting off his face as he takes in Jared’s frantic look.

“You have got to come see this. You will _not_ believe what I just found.”

He offers his hand to Evan (more like shoves his own hand into Evan’s) and doesn’t stop pulling him along to the dusty corner where he had been, even as Evan voices his complaints and tries to turn around to pick up the book left on the ground.

“Look. Look at this,” he says, excitement raising the pitch of his voice. He holds up the CD case and watches as Evan squints to try to make out what the messy handwriting on it says. He can tell the moment Evan figures it out, because his mouth drops open, and the hand that isn’t still in Jared’s comes up to none too gently frantically slap him on the arm.

“Holy shit. Jared. _Holy shit_. Is that—did you actually—”

“— _Yeah_.”

“We haven’t seen any store have it since—”

“—I _know_.”

“We have to get it. Oh my God. Come on, let’s _go_.”

Evan grabs the console and controllers off the shelf and in almost the exact same manner as Jared had dragged him to this corner, he pulls Jared along in the direction of the checkout counter.

“Wait, like right now? Don’t you want to check out the rest of the store?”

“We can do that next weekend.”

Apparently, any thought about the abandoned book has been wiped out of his mind. When they get to the counter and Evan sets down their items, the man behind it looks down at them, unimpressed.

"Eighty-five for the game. Two hundred for the console," he says after a long silence.

Jared balks at the price. He had expected some markup since it had been out of print for so long, but this was just plain predatory. Something in his expression must give away his hesitance upon hearing the price, because he adds on "take it or leave it.”

He turns to Evan, hopeless, because there's no way they can spend that much money on a game, but Evan is uncharacteristically visibly riled up and angry. He watches Evan step up to the counter and slam his hands down on it.

"Are you serious?" he asks, incredulous and leaning in to stare down the shop owner. "There's no way this is worth anything over one fifty. That's the max we'll pay."

"One fifty? That's rich, kid. _They don't make these anymore_ ,” he says, picking up the case and waving it in front of Evan’s face on each word, as if he were slow. “You understand? This game and console haven't been in print in over a decade. They're worth _way_ more than one hundred and fifty dollars."

"If they were worth two hundred and eighty five dollars you wouldn't be hiding them in a corner."

"I got a lotta valuable retro games, you can't expect a _Dreamcast_ to be something most people would be looking for."

"Yeah, most people aren't, so it seems to me like no one else is clamoring to buy it," Jared interjects, emboldened by Evan. At this, he can see the shop owner realize he's fighting a losing battle here.

"Fine. Since it’s refurbished. Two twenty."

"One fifty.”

"In your dreams, kid. Two hundred. That's the lowest I'll go."

"Deal."

Jared is the one who pays for it out of pocket, since he just got paid last week, but they plan on splitting the cost. The owner gives Evan the stink eye when he thinks he isn’t looking as he boxes up their items, but they’re both too happy about their discovery and purchase to let that sour their mood. Jared can feel that Evan is practically vibrating next to him. The package has barely touched the counter before Evan has snatched them into his hands.

Their exit is signaled by the _Mario_ pipe entering noise and Jared turns to Evan as soon as the door closes.

"Dude, you were _intense_ in there."

Jared can see Evan's cheeks redden as he ducks his head, any trace of that intensity now gone.

"Couldn’t let anything get between us and those final levels."

“We’re going to have to play the entire thing again, so more like the _entire game_.”

“Sounds like we got our money’s worth then.”

Jared snorts. They’re both aware that they’ve _definitely_ been ripped off a ridiculous amount.

“You better be signing up for a Paypal account on the way home.”

Jared tries to abide by traffic laws on the way back but if a few get broken along the way then he’s just grateful there’s no ticket to prove it (he’s already spent enough money today).

When they finally get all the cables into the right ports (Evan teases from the couch that Jared's a disgrace to his degree when he ends up sitting on the floor by the TV, confused on which wire goes where) and start playing the game, Jared is hit by how _low quality_ the image is.

" _Oh my God_ ,” he says, leaning in a bit to squint at the screen. “Did we really play this as kids? This looks like complete shit."

"Well, graphics have gotten a lot better in the last decade…”

“Right, but this _hurts_ me to look at now. This is like, a single polygon.”

“Okay, well not all of us stare at a twenty-eight inch 4K monitor all day.”

“Not _all_ day, I’m out here about to game with you, aren’t I?”

“And I’m very grateful you’ve emerged from spending all day with your red, glowing case and backlit mechanical keyboard nightmare cave to do so. It’s also actually nighttime, so you know, point still stands.”

“Oh, you’re _so_ right. At night I come out to terrorize adorable, pedantic boyfriends,” he says as he practically climbs onto Evan to press a sloppy kiss on his cheek, intentionally messing with Evan’s concentration.

“Hey—get off! I’m—” He swats at Jared, who is now practically laying on him. “I’m trying to relive my childhood—wait, you have more than one adorable, pedantic boyfriend?”

Jared gives him a look, before continuing his assault. The game is a lost cause at this point.

“… Okay so maybe you have a point,” Evan says between dodging what can only be described as malicious kisses. “Get off of me, though. You’re heavy.”

“Sorry all this _muscle_ is too much for your frail little body,” he teases, before leaning further in to shove Evan’s face against the couch cushion. He has one of Evan’s hands pinned between him and Evan’s back, and the other one clamped to the side of the couch, rendering Evan unable to gain any leverage to move. The controller is laying uselessly on the ground.

“You say that as if I’m not taller than you,” comes the muffled response.

“If you’re so big then why don’t you _make_ me get off you?”

“Jared, third grade called and they want their joke back.”

“I don’t wanna hear anything coming from the guy currently eating fart particles.”

“Yeah? And whose fault is that?”

“I don’t know…” He trails off, scrunching up his face in mock contemplation—not that Evan can see it anyways. “I mean you _did_ have Chipotle for dinner yesterday,” he continues, as if he weren’t currently holding Evan’s face into the couch at that very moment.

“Okay, fine! Sure. It’s _entirely_ my fault I’m currently eating farts or whatever. Now will you please let me up?”

“Well,” he says, drawing out the word. “Since you so graciously admitted to your fault, I _suppose_.” He shifts his weight off Evan slightly, as if he were about to finally let him up, before doubling down and shoving Evan’s face further down into the couch, messing with his hair in the process.

“But only for a price!” The mischievous glee is practically dripping in his voice.

“Are you actually serious? I’m suffocating down here!”

“Then I’m sure you’ll be willing to pay.”

“... Fine. What do you want?”

“The price…” He trails off, making this last as long as possible. “It will be an _exorbitant_ one—”

“—oh, so we’ve remembered our big boy words now?”

Jared continues, ignoring him. “As it is in exchange for the release of one Evan Hansen, imprisoned for insulting my beloved Claptrap, I will be demanding—”

“—you _have_ to stop calling your PC that thing from Borderlands,” says a still muffled voice into the cushions.

“Silence! I am still listing my demands—”

“—you haven’t listed a single one yet!”

“Because I was interrupted! Anyways. I was saying, I demand only the most valuable of gifts for—”

“—it’s not a gift if I’m being extorted for it.”

“Do you want to be let up or not?”

“Duly noted. Continue with your demands, you terrible extortionist.”

Jared ignores that last bit, trying hard not to laugh throughout this entire process. Because he’s sitting on top of Evan, he can literally feel the rise and fall of his chest as he laughs into the couch cushions, and it does not help him contain his own laughter at all.

“The most _valuable_ of _gifts_! Of—of which there is uh, no monetary value to, for it is worth far more than mere money.”

“Bet it’s not worth more than two hundred dollars.”

“One hundred! It—it was one!” he sputters, finally breaking out into actual laughter. “We split it—we _technically_ only paid one hundred dollars for it. And silence from the prisoner! Anyways, where was I? _Right_ , the price. Worth _far_ more than some silly green paper. What I want? What I _desire_? It is simple. The price is...” He pauses for dramatic effect, not that his overly dawn out performance needs it. He’s sure if he could see Evan’s face there would be eyerolls.

“I think I’m actually going to suffocate before you tell me what you want.”

“One would think someone on the verge of suffocation wouldn’t have the spare oxygen for snide remarks…" He sighs, making sure to trail off and continue to drag this out as long as he can. "Well, I _suppose_ , since you’re in _such_ a hurry here, and I _am_ a nice guy, I'll tell you what I want. The price? A single kiss for your dashing and _very_ funny boyfriend.”

“I have a dashing and very funny boyfriend? Where? It can’t be the guy on top of me because _he’s trying to kill me_!” Over the course of his response, Evan is slowly rising in volume, and by the end, were it not for the fact that Evan’s face was in a cushion, Jared's sure they’d get complaints from neighbors.

“Me, try to kill you? I would _never_ ," he replies as he finally gets off Evan, returning to his own spot on the couch, innocently looking around everywhere but at Evan, pretending he’s done nothing wrong.

Evan sits up, too, hand in his own hair trying to fix it after it had been messed with by Jared and flattened against the side of the couch for so long. When Jared finally turns to look at Evan to get his kiss, he sees Evan’s face and bursts out into laughter.

“What?” Evan asks, scrunching up his face, which only makes Jared laugh even harder. “What’s so funny? The fact that I almost died down there?”

“No—it’s just—the _cushion_ —I’m—” He struggles to get words out between his laughter.

“Use your words.”

It takes a few moments, because every time he looks at Evan’s face it hits him again, but finally he’s able to calm himself down enough to gasp out a full sentence. “The couch cushion—the couch cushion _left a fucking imprint_ all over your face since you were down there for so long.”

Evan’s face sours and he brings a hand up to rub at it.

“There’s no way that’s going to make it any better,” he says, voice still breathy with mirth. He pulls Evan’s hand from his face and into his own. It’s sweaty but he doesn’t mind. “Here, come on,” he says, closing his eyes as he leans in for his so-called _gift_.

Their lips meet and he can feel Evan’s disgruntled frown soften against his own lingering smile. The kiss doesn’t last very long, mainly because they’re both still a bit out of breath. When they break apart, they end up resting their foreheads against each other, faces still close enough that they’re practically breathing the air from the other’s lungs. The only sound that fills the room is their slight pants. After a few moments, he feels Evan’s lips meet his again, a bit wet from their last encounter. He brings Evan’s lower lips into his own and sucks on it lightly. Evan retaliates by running hand through his hair and pulling on it, which he supposes is only fair since he had messed with his’ earlier.

“Thought I was only getting one kiss?” he asks when they finally break apart, only to find it coming out a bit hoarse.

“The first one was for the guy who tried to suffocate me. _That_ one was for my dashing and very funny boyfriend.”

Jared can feel his cheeks heat up at that comment. Even though Evan says things like that to him all the time now, he still isn’t used to it. He turns back to the TV, only to see it showing the _Game Over_ screen.

“Oops.”

Evan turns to look at what Jared is looking at.

“Well… At least it’s not like we made it very far before there was an attempt on my life.”

They do eventually get back to playing the game, and for quite a few hours. Every once in a while, when they finally figure out a puzzle or complete a particularly difficult platforming maneuver, Jared can almost remember when he reached that exact same moment as a kid. Unfortunately, it's long enough ago that neither of them actually remember any of the solutions to the puzzles, only recognizing that they've gotten it right after the fact. They make good progress on the game and at a much quicker pace than when they were kids. When they beat one level, Jared distinctly recalls that one took them an entire week of attempts to get before. Still, it's definitely not a game that can be beaten in one night on first playthrough (it counts as first if they haven’t played it in a decade, he thinks).

At some point several hours into gameplay, Jared looks over at Evan, hunched forward, brows furrowed, and eyes glued to the screen. They sit side by side in the dim living room, the overhead lights off and only the TV and a small lamp for light. Evan sits cross-legged and his knee digs into Jared’s thigh, slightly uncomfortably now that he’s aware of it. They’ve turned down the TV so as to not disturb any of their neighbors at this late hour (not that they often extend that same courtesy to them), so it’s mostly the quiet clicks of Evan on the controller that he hears.

He’s suddenly very aware of who and where he is. It’s almost a feeling of being high, and he takes a long moment to revel in it. He thinks that he wants to remember this moment forever; the warm and dim room, the company, that in a decade when he looks back on college it won't be the stress and the workload he remembers, but moments like these where he feels like he and Evan are the only people on Earth, and so lucky that everything in his life has aligned to put him where he is in this moment.

He’s been _here_ , a million and for the first time. Everything and nothing is different from when he was eleven and scared and thirteen and in love and seventeen and intoxicated, and now he’s twenty and he’s still all of those things; maybe now, he could be something new, maybe he could—

"Jared, pay attention!” He’s shaken out of his reverie by Evan, who nudges him in the side with an elbow. “You're going to get us killed and we’ll have to restart the level _again_."

“Sorry, sorry. I’m sure attempt number fifty-seven will go _much_ better than all the ones that came before.”

They play for a while longer, and when Jared puts down the controller so he can rub at his increasingly bleary eyes, he pulls out his phone to check the time. The digital numbers _3:55 AM_ stare back at him.

"Holy shit. Evan. It's _four AM_. We've been playing for like, six hours straight. I need to go to sleep." As if to punctuate his point, his body makes him yawn right as he's done speaking.

"After this level though, since we have to reach a checkpoint to save at."

"But we've been stuck on this level for like, half an hour."

"Which means we've gotta be close figuring it out!"

"We could just look it up. There has to be guides or something on the internet."

"No! We have to figure this out ourselves."

"Come on, we'll be here until dawn at this rate."

"Then so be it," Evan replies dramatically.

It takes a few moments for Evan to notice him, body angled slightly away, typing on his phone to try to pull up GameFAQs.

"Jared!" Evan knocks into his side, throwing him off balance and knocking his phone out of his loose grip. "Don't you care about the integrity of the game?"

“Not as much as I care about the fact that I have an eight AM in the morning," he says, without making any real attempt at getting his phone back, which has fallen to the floor.

"... Anything important going to happen in that class?"

“Evan, are _you_ seriously trying to get me to skip? We’re not even going to finish the game tonight, no matter how fast we go.”

“Oh, come on. You’re always complaining about how Dr. Ganapathi never goes over anything that’s actually on the exams. You can’t tell me you _actually_ want to go to his class in the morning.”

“... Fine. But I’m going to take a break for a bit. I’ll watch you play.”

Jared sets his controller down on the floor and curls up on his side so that his legs are splayed over Evan’s lap, equally for his own comfort and because he knows it’s going to be a minor annoyance to Evan, as that was where his controller had been resting. He stares at the screen, sideways, and his glasses dig into the side of his face; they end up joining the controller and phone on the floor.

“That can’t be good for your eyes,” Evan comments as he looks over once Jared has readjusted himself.

“It’s almost completely dark in here. Isn’t looking at a screen in the dark also supposed to be bad for your eyes or something?”

“Good point. You’re the one whose eyesight is shit already, though.”

“Guess you’ll just have to take care of me when I go blind.”

Evan gives an exaggerated sigh. “The hardships I go through for you.”

Their conversation trails off, with occasional commentary on the game (“there’s no way you can make that jump” “fucking _watch_ me”) littering the silence.

Jared watches Evan play, rubbing at his bleary eyes increasingly often. Now that he’s not playing anymore, his drowsy mind slowly drifts back to his earlier thoughts. _It would be so easy_ , he thinks through his tired haze, _just to let it out right now_. He could. His lips part slightly, before he’s even sure of what is going to come out.

“Evan?”

“Yeah?”

And then whatever he was going to say gets interrupted by a yawn.

Evan spares a few seconds to glance over to him. Squinting in the darkness, he asks “are you falling asleep on me?”

“No,” Jared says, the end of the word turning into another yawn, and ruining any credibility it has.

“Right, well if you’re not falling asleep then I’m sure you won’t be needing this.”

Evan reaches around and grabs the throw pillow he’s been sitting against all night and tosses it to Jared. Unfortunately for him, his reaction time is delayed enough from fatigue that it hits him square in the face. Jared lets out a surprised noise, sputtering at the sudden and unexpected contact.

When he pulls it off his face, he catches Evan trying and failing to hold back a smile.

“Can’t say I didn’t deserve that,” he says as he arranges the pillow underneath his head. All thoughts of what he was going to say has been erased from his lethargic mind by the time he’s laid his head back down. What now occupies his thoughts is that he’s grateful the pillow isn’t damp from having been between Evan’s back and the couch for hours, and then tangents into a gradual cessation of thoughts. Once, he closes his tired eyes, intending for it to last only a few brief moments.

They won’t open again for almost nine hours. Jared will wake up in the morning with a warm feeling in his chest, of which swimming in a fuzzy throw blanket (emblazoned with their school’s red-and-black logo) that has appeared on him sometime in the night has nothing to do with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And they were roommates. Oh my God, they were roommates.
> 
> I was hoping to get this chapter out on the 2 month anniversary of when I last updated but looks like I missed it by a few days, but better late than never!
> 
> From the game Borderlands: Claptrap is a general purpose robot manufactured by Hyperion. It has been programmed with an overenthusiastic personality, and brags frequently, yet also expresses severe loneliness and cowardice.

**Author's Note:**

> Unbetad, so let me know about any spelling/grammar mistakes. Kudos, comments, concrit, feedback, anything you dis/liked, etcetera are appreciated. Drop your favorite line or something in the comments.
> 
> Follow me at [outlawslikeus](https://outlawslikeus.tumblr.com) on tumblr. I take requests (but also, no promises).


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